The use of wireless communication devices have become so prevalent in today's society that almost everyone uses a cell phone or other wireless communication device for communication with one another. As people become more confident with the use of these wireless communication devices and the services they provide, the use of wired devices, such as a wired telephone at home, have become less important in day-to-day life. The result of this change in behavior has led many people to discontinue their wired communication service and rely entirely on their wireless communication device. In some circumstances, such as those living on the fringe of service or living in large multi-unit complexes, the marginal signal strength in these locations makes relying entirely on a wireless service a somewhat risky proposition.
In addition to mobile phone networks currently in place, a new class of small base stations has emerged, which may be installed in a user's home and provide indoor wireless coverage to mobile units using existing broadband Internet connections. Such personal miniature base stations are generally known as access point base stations, or, alternatively, Home Node B (HNB) or femto cells. The coverage area of a femto cell is relatively small and may cells may be connected to use mobile broadband access such as via High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA).
Femto cells have evolved to allow the user to increase or provide sufficient signal strength in be overlapped with neighboring wireless systems and other femto cells. Femto cells are also connected to the wireless communication system using an Internet Protocol based transmission system. Typically, such miniature base stations are connected to the Internet and the mobile operator's network via broadband fixed access such as via a residential gateway (typically a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) router or a cable modem). Alternatively, the femto cells can be implemented in any area where the user desires wireless communication device usage and a high-speed internet connection is available. For example, a wireless communication device user can install and initialize a femto cell in their apartment and create a wireless communication service bubble permitting reliable communications by the wireless device and allowing the user to cancel their wired communications service and rely on their wireless communication device.
Neighboring wireless communication systems may employ one or more radio access technologies on one or more frequencies typically via fixed base stations, also known as macro cells. Furthermore, a system may have one radio access technology overlaying another. For example, portions of a global system for mobile communications (GSM) system may be overlapped with Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) base stations which may be overlapped with various femto cells. It may be desirable for the user equipment (UE) communicating on the macro cell to handoff to the femto cell system either when idle or while in call without dropping an active call.
Generally, a femto cell is a low-powered base station that typically resides within a building and provides cellular transceivers with access to a fixed network. The femto cell generally includes base station functionality, as well as means to communicate with a fixed network such as the Internet. Generally, a femto cell utilizes a residential gateway and related components to access the internet. As used herein, the term “residential gateway” refers to an interface between a wide area network (WAN) and one or more local end user devices, also referred to as customer premises equipment (CPE) devices. Residential gateways operate as functional bridges between the external network and the CPE devices, receiving application-agnostic data from the external network, separating the data into various types, optionally reformatting it for a particular application, and distributing the data via one or more in-premises networks to one or more CPE devices. Each CPE device may consume the data in its raw format or perform additional transformations on the data prior to use. Data that is distributed by the gateway may include, but is not limited to, voice, video, and/or computer data.
Conventional residential gateway devices provide end users with only limited data monitoring and control functions. For example, conventional residential gateways permit some filtering of computer data for security and network management purposes, such as providing firewall and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services. These functions of the residential gateway are generally configured by the end user via a Web interface, which provides some visibility into the traditional computer data functions of the gateway device, as well as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) network monitoring and control functions. It should be noted that currently most residential gateways do not generate SNMP traps. In general, however, apart from the provisioning and control of computer data network services, no other function exists within these devices to control or monitor other application data types, such as voice or video.
Some conventional residential gateways include interfaces that convert voice and video data received from the WAN from an Internet Protocol (IP) format into a native format used by a customer premises equipment (CPE) device, such as a telephone or television. Control of these interfaces may be provided via provisioning services from the network or from craft interfaces into the residential gateway, but in general this control is limited to “on/off” type functionality, such as mapping IP addresses to telephone numbers, or providing a video cutoff relay.
Central network monitoring authorities (usually service providers) have methodologies to monitor, control, and maintain the connectivity of groups of customers (e.g., in a small metropolitan area). Various methods are known for monitoring and/or controlling connectivity within neighborhoods and fixed access points. However, today, the connectivity in individual residential gateways is unmonitored.
The above-described deficiencies of today's wireless communications systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art and corresponding benefits of one or more of the various non-limiting embodiments may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.